Peter Shaffer by C.J. Gianakaris (review)

Book Reviews 535 able is Les' Taniuk's examination of the development in modern Ukrainian drama of the Romantic image of the prophet and of the complex relationship between prophet and audience. . Three essays on Polish drama are of special interest. Daniel Gerould does a masterful job in describing precisely and concisely the dramatic works and achievements of Slawomir Mrozek. Offering a penetrating look at the five giants of modem Polish drama, Bogdan Czaykowski notes the similarities and dissimilarities in their critical response to poetry and to poetic drama, both of which are central to the Polish literary tradition. Stanislaw Baranczak analyzes the charming but devastating miniature plays or small narratives in dialogue form by Miron Bialoszewski that comment on the uses and abuses of language, people, and history, though the failure to mention the precedent of Galczynski is puzzling. Among the contributions devoted to Russian drama two stand out. Emma Polockaja compares the creative "loner" in Hauptmann's Einsame Menschen with his counterpart , Treplev, in Chekhov's The Seagull; the differences in the characters and their characterization comment eloquently on the changes undergone by much of world drama as the nineteenth century passed into the twentieth. Boris Thomson's article on the early plays by the Russian Constructivist poet Ilja Sel'vinskij discusses the ways in which they respond to the conventions of verse drama in the Russian theatre and comment on the poetics and thematics of revolutionary art in the 1920S. Finally, from the playwrights' forum that concludes the volume Lina Kostenko's often harrowing account of Ukraine's colonial cultural status - its language muffled and strangled, its artists oppressed and suppressed - must be commended. Tracing the abnormal development of Ukrainian drama and theatre, mourning the obscurity of the most impressive achievements, and warning of the possible crippling of a liberated future by the shackled past, Kostenko's essay demonstrates how the collection as a whole best serves its readers by presenting information which, if not totally unknown, is relatively unfamiliar to Western audiences. RALPH LINDHEIM. UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO C.!. GIANAKARIS. Peter Shaffer. New York: St. Martin's Press 1992. Pp. vii, 204. $24.95· c.J. Gianakaris's Peter Shaffer, part of the Modern Dramatists Series edited by Bruce and Adele King, is written for a lay audience interested in the modem theatre's cultural contribution to society. Scholars, theatre historians, and theorists will also find some value in this study, although most of Gianakaris's research has been delineated in previous criticism on Shaffer. After a brief assessment of Shaffer's early life, Gianakaris examines the detective novels. which lay the groundwork for the motifs in the plays. Gianakaris astutely characterizes Shaffer's early writing as overwrought, sentimental verbiage. The detective in search of the solution to the murder mystery eventually evolves into Shaffer's quest Book Reviews for our metaphysical origins in The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Equus, Amadeus, and Yonadab. The next section, which analyzes Shaffer's radio and television plays, is most useful because these dramas are not accessible, and consequently, very little has been written about them. In this first chapter, Gianakaris reveals what he considers to be Shaffer's leitmotif: "the protagonist's search to define a relationship between humankind and a universal deity" (14). The trouble is that this theme is absent from Shaffer's comedies, which represent the majority of his dramas. The thesis therefore applies only to select plays; perhaps this inability to grasp the kernel of Shaffer's oeuvre explains the paucity of full-length critical studies on the British playwright. Gianakaris does a fine job of examining Shaffer's early plays, including Five Finger Exercise, The Private Ear, The Public Eye, Black Comedy, and White Liars. He is thorough , paying particular attention to production history (including critical reactions), form, content, and stage techniques; however, virtually all of this information has been presented in previous books on Shaffer. Shrivings, unfortunately, is dismissed too abruptly. Although the failure of Shrivings on stage may preclude the in-depth assessment that might be accorded Shaffer's mature plays, Gianakaris goes too far in reducing the characters to "essentially puppet figures" (72). In many ways, there are more subtle sexual...